passive construction - detemining the subject.
Question in bold:
Los amigos están invitados. (not passive) 'Los amigos' is the subject.
Se invita a los amigos. (passive) What is the subject?
Thanks!
5 Answers
Se invita a los amigos. (passive) What is the subject?
Alguien invita a los amigos. Somebody invites friends.
Some friends are invited. Los amigos son invitados por alguien.
This is pure theory as the pure passive voice is hardly ever used in Spanish, we prefer to use the se pasiva
Se invita a los amigos.
The subject, alguien, is understood.
In English a Passive voice has an object having something done to it with or without an identified subject.
However,
The Passive Voice in Spanish is normally formed by using se + the third person singular or plural conjugation of a verb, similar to what we did with the Impersonal se. In Spanish there is not a subject - identified or not!
This may be easier to see in classic Spanish passive voice than with passive se.
Ser+pp+por+agente
Active voice
Emilio read the book. Emilio is the subject.
passive voice
The book was read by Emilio. (We have an agent but the agent is not the subject)
One of the purposes of using passive voice is to shift the importance to the object of the English active voice sentence and obscure or suppress entirely the subject (who is performing the action) or the agent.
Pedro kissed the dog. Active with Subject (Pedro)
The dog was kissed. Passive without any Subject because it is not needed for the sentence to make sense. (Maybe we don't know who kissed the dog or don't want to say)
Pedro besó el perro. Active
El perro fue besado. Passive - but I am not sure if this would be the best way to do it in Spanish. I am a bit confused by the se pasiva too.
EDIT: See the other posts for better answers.
Some other sites with discussions:
Tehnically the object acts on the subject and the subject is either implied or not mentioned at all. Amigos is the object.
